caitlinwalker
30-07-2008, 03:15 PM
Title: Using Clean Questions and Symbolic Modeling to become all of who you used to be
I came to see Caitlin Walker two months ago because I felt that I found myself having to keep solving the same problems and so could never move on, both in my
working and personal life.
In preparation, she asked me to draw a picture of what this
problem was like; I decided it was like a thorny hedge that blocked my progress along a straight, sunny path.
When I arrived for the first session, she asked me questions to help to develop this picture and to find out more about its history.
I realized that it was as if I fought my way through the thorny hedge with a pair of red boxing gloves on, (with the number 6 on them!) after struggling through the hedge to the other side and setting off to achieve my goal, I would find myself back where I started on the other side of the hedge and have to do it all over again. In real life this pattern showed itself in how I would go so far in a job and then sabotage myself in promotion interviews, change job and start again. It was also evident in how I began and ended personal relationships.
Caitlin asked me different questions about where the hedge came from and where I came from before I was on this path with a hedge in the way and all sorts of other symbols unfolded.
I had a strong sense of myself in a Carver chair dressed in a white dress at age 6! I found a box with terrible secrets in it that I was scared of revealing. I can’t remember how I ended up drawing four different versions of myself, introducing a complex narrative, which involved me as a child, me as a 30-year-old, and me as now. But I can
remember Caitlin asking me questions to which I responded with more
frantic drawings.
After the first session I took my drawings home with me. Later that night I had a terrible sense that the box was going to open and reveal its secrets even though I didn’t want it to. I called Caitlin who said to stay with it and map or draw the symbols as they were revealed.
The secrets came out as beautiful jewels which were my greatest qualities of character which I had locked away as a child because these ways of being were not acceptable when I was a child! I redrew the open box and the jewellery and I had the sensation that I was wearing the jewels around my body. Weirdest of all was that during the next week after our first session, I broke out in eczema across my knuckles. This eczema developed into scratch marks that cracked and bled, just as though I had been punching through thorns. As my metaphors changed and healed up so did my knuckles. That was my own personal stigmata, and a powerful testament to Caitlin’s work.
I came to see Caitlin Walker two months ago because I felt that I found myself having to keep solving the same problems and so could never move on, both in my
working and personal life.
In preparation, she asked me to draw a picture of what this
problem was like; I decided it was like a thorny hedge that blocked my progress along a straight, sunny path.
When I arrived for the first session, she asked me questions to help to develop this picture and to find out more about its history.
I realized that it was as if I fought my way through the thorny hedge with a pair of red boxing gloves on, (with the number 6 on them!) after struggling through the hedge to the other side and setting off to achieve my goal, I would find myself back where I started on the other side of the hedge and have to do it all over again. In real life this pattern showed itself in how I would go so far in a job and then sabotage myself in promotion interviews, change job and start again. It was also evident in how I began and ended personal relationships.
Caitlin asked me different questions about where the hedge came from and where I came from before I was on this path with a hedge in the way and all sorts of other symbols unfolded.
I had a strong sense of myself in a Carver chair dressed in a white dress at age 6! I found a box with terrible secrets in it that I was scared of revealing. I can’t remember how I ended up drawing four different versions of myself, introducing a complex narrative, which involved me as a child, me as a 30-year-old, and me as now. But I can
remember Caitlin asking me questions to which I responded with more
frantic drawings.
After the first session I took my drawings home with me. Later that night I had a terrible sense that the box was going to open and reveal its secrets even though I didn’t want it to. I called Caitlin who said to stay with it and map or draw the symbols as they were revealed.
The secrets came out as beautiful jewels which were my greatest qualities of character which I had locked away as a child because these ways of being were not acceptable when I was a child! I redrew the open box and the jewellery and I had the sensation that I was wearing the jewels around my body. Weirdest of all was that during the next week after our first session, I broke out in eczema across my knuckles. This eczema developed into scratch marks that cracked and bled, just as though I had been punching through thorns. As my metaphors changed and healed up so did my knuckles. That was my own personal stigmata, and a powerful testament to Caitlin’s work.